After Xuan Ke and Yan Luo returned from the tower, seven days had passed.
During these seven days, Chen Yuyang hadn’t been idle.
Outside the tower, he had gradually contacted and recruited other cultivators from the Yan and Xuan families, forming a team.
Among them, four were from the Xuan family and two from the Yan family.
From them, Chen Yuyang obtained a token as a reference.
At the same time, he also gathered some miscellaneous information.
Apart from the team of seven or eight formed by the Dongfang family, there were other families or forces in this secret realm that had spontaneously formed small teams, usually three or four people per group.
Additionally, one thing caught Chen Yuyang’s attention.
In the west of this secret realm, a very powerful lightning-attribute cultivator had recently appeared.
No one knew his specific identity, only that he always wore a mask and a black cloak, and could unleash terrifyingly powerful heavenly lightning.
According to the Yan family cultivator who reported it, he had defeated over twenty people and thus accumulated nearly a hundred tokens, making him the person with the most known tokens.
There was once a five-person team that didn’t believe it and joined forces to deal with him.
But the moment they met, the lightning cultivator waved his hand and sent several purple heavenly lightning bolts.
Three were heavily injured on the spot and directly teleported out.
The remaining two were forced to drop all their tokens before being spared.
“Yuyang, Yuyang, what floor did you reach?”
Yan Luo had just returned from the tower and eagerly grabbed Chen Yuyang, asking curiously.
“Five floors.”
Chen Yuyang didn’t even lift his head, casually reporting a number.
“Huh? Only five floors?”
Yan Luo’s eyes widened in disbelief.
“I reached nine floors! The artifact spirit at the top even praised my talent and gave me a fire-attribute secret technique.”
In Yan Luo’s view, given Chen Yuyang’s strength, even clearing the entire training tower wouldn’t be surprising.
How could he only reach the fifth floor?
“Bad luck.”
But what Yan Luo didn’t know was that Chen Yuyang hadn’t actually gone up at all.
He was too lazy to explain, so he said it casually.
“Nine floors…” Xuan Ke, who had come out a few hours earlier, overheard Yan Luo’s words and couldn’t help showing a hint of regret on her face.
“Too bad—I almost reached nine floors too.”
After coming out, Xuan Ke also received a spell that suited her.
Without further discussion about the training tower, Chen Yuyang’s gaze swept over the nine people present, and he spoke in a deep voice.
“Ten days have passed now. The cultivators still wandering around must all have some tokens on them. It’s time to start harvesting.”
Yan Luo licked her lips, and a gleam of excitement immediately flashed in her eyes.
“Great, I’ve been waiting for this day for a long time!”
Xuan Ke also nodded.
“Exactly. It’s time to act. Besides, none of us have any tokens now.”
The core trio—Chen Yuyang, Yan Luo, and Xuan Ke—then discussed together.
But calling it a discussion, it was basically Chen Yuyang coming up with ideas.
Yan Luo completely obeyed Chen Yuyang, and after hearing his suggestions, Xuan Ke would raise no objections if she found them reasonable.
So the final arrangement was as follows: In the nine-person team, three cultivators who excelled in speed would scout ahead to gather intelligence and find suitable targets for the main force.
The remaining six, including Chen Yuyang, Yan Luo, Xuan Ke, and the others, would then conduct targeted hunting operations based on the intelligence obtained.
Chen Yuyang took out three communication jade tokens from his storage pouch and handed them to the three scouts, instructing them, “Once you find a target, immediately report the location, the number of opponents, and their cultivation levels. Even if nothing happens, no matter day or night, you must check in every hour to report your own positions, to prevent being attacked without anyone knowing.”
The three took the jade tokens with no objections.
With Xuan Ke and Yan Luo both listening to Chen Yuyang, the others also followed his lead.
According to his arrangement, he would lead the group, sweeping through each area one by one using this simple pattern.
Once the arrangements were made, the three scouts sped off in their respective directions, their reconnaissance range roughly forming a fan shape.
Chen Yuyang led the remaining six, slowly following behind in the direction the three had gone.
……
In the west of the secret realm, inside a dark and damp cave.
The mask was removed, revealing a delicate and lovely face beneath it.
Yunlian exhaled a breath of spiritual energy, a hint of fatigue in her brows.
After several days of intense combat, her nerves had been constantly tense.
The young girl walked quickly to the depths of the cave, raised her hand, and removed a talisman stuck behind an inconspicuous stone.
As the talisman dissipated, a section of the stone wall vanished, revealing a half-person-high recess behind it.
Inside the recess lay a wooden box.
She picked up the box, opened it, and placed the thirteen tokens she had obtained from defeating several cultivators today into it.
Inside the box were neatly stacked over a hundred tokens, each emitting a faint glow.
“One hundred ninety-four, plus today’s thirteen tokens—two hundred seven in total.”
Yunlian counted on her fingers, but her brow slightly furrowed.
“Business has been slow these past two days.”
“I don’t run into many people when I go out, and even if I do, they have no real value. It’s a waste of my shixiong’s talismans.”
Muttering to herself, she took out a stack of yellow talismans from her ring, counting the ones she had left.
“One hundred fifty sheets. One hundred and four remaining.”
She had been using them so lavishly—throwing them at anyone she saw—yet after half the trial time had passed, she had only used a third.
She couldn’t use them up, not at all.
The number of talismans her shixiong had given her was so excessive it felt luxurious.
And the concealment talismans he had given her could perfectly mask the unique spiritual energy fluctuations emitted by the tokens.
Otherwise, she wouldn’t have felt safe leaving so many tokens outside her body.
The girl closed the box, reattached the talisman, and the rock wall reappeared, hiding it away.
After finishing, Yunlian returned to the cave entrance and looked out at the gray night sky and the silent forest.
‘I think I’ve pretty much cleaned out everyone in this area.’
She leaned against the stone wall, lowering her head in thought.
‘Should I switch areas?’
Her eyes showed hesitation.
‘Over two hundred tokens is definitely enough for a good ranking—maybe even first place isn’t out of reach. That means I don’t really need to keep taking risks. I still have plenty of talismans, but my own strength isn’t great. If someone realizes that and manages to withstand the first few attacks from my talismans to strike my real body, there’s still some risk.’
‘There’s still half a month left,’ Yunlian decided inwardly.
‘Maybe I’ll just wander around nearby, grab a few more if I can, and if not, it’s fine. I’ll find a place to rest for a few days, recharge, and when the trial ends, just go out and claim my reward.’
Having made up her mind, she took out a clean blanket from her ring, spread it on the ground, and sat cross-legged, intending to circulate her energy to recover.
Outside the cave, the night wind howled, making the interior feel even more silent.
Suddenly, Yunlian’s eyes snapped open.
A sense of foreboding surged in her heart.
“What’s wrong?”
She stopped regulating her breath, squinting.
‘This feeling of being watched… something’s not right!’
She steadied her mind and released her spiritual sense to probe the surroundings, but found nothing unusual.
Yet the prickling sense of crisis didn’t disappear—it only grew stronger.
‘No…’ Her expression shifted.
She swiftly pulled a defensive talisman from her ring and crushed it without hesitation.
The talisman shattered and transformed into a layer of earth-yellow light barrier, enveloping the girl.
At that very moment…
Boom!
A violent explosion rang out.
A devastating force slammed down, and the entire cave collapsed!
Boulders fell like rain, and in an instant, dust filled the air as the ground shook.
Before Yunlian could react, she was buried beneath the rubble.
….
Meanwhile, three figures slowly materialized in the sky.
The leader, clad in green robes with a handsome face, held a seal in his hand that was shrinking, radiating a heavy pressure.
The attack that had just instantly destroyed the cave and leveled the entire peak was his doing.
“Brother Yun, using your Mountain River Seal right off the bat—don’t you think that’s a bit much for this guy?”
The handsome youth beside the green-robed cultivator said with a teasing smile.
“Even a lion uses its full strength when hunting a rabbit.”
The green-robed cultivator, Dongfang Yun, replied expressionlessly, his cold gaze fixed on the collapsed rocks below.
“She’s only around the eighth level of Golden Core, but the talismans she uses are extremely powerful. Even we can’t withstand too many of them. So if we don’t strike, it’s fine; but if we do, we must go all out.”
“That’s right,” the gray-robed cultivator on the other side chimed in.
“But Brother Yun, don’t kill her with that blow.”
“Probably not—I held back a little. Still, she should be heavily injured and sent out of the trial.”
Dongfang Yun sounded uncertain.
“Her aura has disappeared.”
The handsome youth, Dongfang Ge, extended his spiritual sense and then spoke.
“Yes, it’s gone. But if she’d been teleported out, those tokens shouldn’t be impossible to sense,” the gray-robed cultivator immediately said.
“She might have some special method to conceal her aura. Don’t let your guard down.”
Hearing this, Dongfang Yun’s pupils contracted as he realized the same thing.
He raised his hand, and the Mountain River Seal enlarged again, floating in the air.
Seeing this, Yunlian dared not hide any longer.
She broke through the rubble and appeared.
“Wait!”
Yunlian emerged, her eyes filled with wariness as she looked at the three.
She could sense that the auras of those three in the sky were extremely powerful and terrifying—clearly beyond the Golden Core realm.
Three Nascent Soul cultivators!
Moments ago, she had relied on her defensive talisman to withstand that strike without serious injury.
She had planned to use her concealment talisman to hide and wait for them to get closer before striking.
But she hadn’t expected them to detect her, so she had no choice but to reveal herself.
Otherwise, if that seal came crashing down again, she would really be sent out for good.
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